Post- Ike Life...

...is slowly returning to normal.

Before the storm......

The final decision was made to stay. We couldn't get east due to Gustav....nowhere West until we hit El Paso...ugh. Road North is blocked and detoured to Lufkin.....a shelter in Lufkin or home ....so we stay home. There are no hotel rooms available.....

So the morning before Ike comes to visit we head outside for some playtime. It was cool with a light breeze ....we watched the clouds spin counter clockwise above us.....

I bake and he mows.....an acre with a push mower! Everyone took a turn including the little kids!

John took Sam out when the tropical force winds started up.... Sam LOVED it! I think that was the reason he was able to sleep during the whole storm .....The sounds didn't scare him since he thought it was just like the winds he experienced in the afternoon..... The kids sleep soundly during the winds. Charlotte woke when the eye it...it was much to quiet for her and did not fall back to sleep until the winds picked backup an hour later...

After Ike....

The playground stands! We really thought we would lose it! This isn't storm surge just rain water.... We were incredibly lucky. We headed out the next day to visit a community a little farther north and the destruction was outstanding. We had NO damage ...just a few lost tree limbs.

Everyone gets involved with the clean up. I didn't get a picture of our neighborhood after all the limbs are on the curb. You could not see the houses ....just mounds of stuff on the curb.The levy system that we live behind saved us for the storm surge. Many communities farther inland were not so lucky....Oldtimers were amazed at how high the water line was on the levies....they have never seen it this high....

The dike was stripped bare of buildings and we were unable to drive down it on this day......But it did its job and protected our community!

Just a few miles from our home... The levy kept the debris on 1-45 and not in our backyard!

Our life is almost normal as long as we avoid a regular grocery store. Shelfs are semi-bare and folks are a little crazy because of it. I am the only adult in the family who is not able to return to work....Galveston is not open for business yet and the hospital flooded.

The kids missed their Wednesday break from school! Sam hasn't been able to keep the days of the week straight since I've been home all week...Soon things will return to normal....

Snow days

I thought we were off to a great start for the school year....until Ike took a turn. Tuesday I checked the my hospital's weather alert and Ike was no longer a concern. Wednesday at work by noon ....essential personal were being called in by Thursday pm... and by the time I left people were being asked if they felt like making a trip to Austin with the babies.....

I stopped on the way home and topped off my tank. So decisions needed to be made .... stay or go. We couldn't get to plan A due to Gustav and 2 members of the family were going to have to work Thursday so we stay. I did call my folks with a Plan B but it didn't go very far..... I woke at 3 am made a quick inventory of supplies needed( we were dangerously low on green tea and sodas.....we also stocked up on junk food. nothing makes the hours pass like chips and dip) and made a Walmart run. Great timing....shelfs were being restocked. The cashier mention that it just slowed down.....I just knew there was no way I was going to be in a store on Thursday day. Folks are CRAZY the day before a hurricane. Come on folks.....you live on the gulf coast prepare early. Why are you fighting over food and water when you should've had on your shelf 2 months ago.....

OK. I digress......Unloaded the car and it was already hot. Of course it is going to be the hottest day in weeks when we have work to do....so instead of going to sleep I start on the yard. The garage is a jig saw puzzle....how do I put all the yard stuff in it and still have room for a car. While working I think of Plan C and then my folks pull in the driveway... Plan C is shot down. Plan C was a GREAT plan......Little kids, Big Sis' and grandma head out of town.... The rest of us get the houses ready. Grandma refused to go to the location. BAH!

Ok we stay...

Rita we left. Charlotte was a newborn it was a no brainer. I was in a maternity fog and wasn't aware of such mundane things as hurricanes( I kinda missed the Katrina ordeal ) until we recieved the call that we are going to be under a mandatory evacuation order starting 12 noon tomorrow. I don't even think we boarded up the house. We received the call at 7pm and we were on the road by 4am. We also didn't have family members that had responsibilities. We missed all the humanity that was the Rita evacuation.

Yesterday... DH and oldest son headed off to work. I fielded phone calls and did all I could without them. Dh came up and we pulled up boards and started putting them up. It is hot.....steamy.....red in the face hot.

Surreal moment number #1 - We are struggling with a board and about to throw in the towel and wait for the young male in the family to come home to help us when they evacuate the nursing home down the street. A fleet of ambulance and buses file down our street. THEN we see the helicopters that are evacuating the hospital that I work at..... We laugh and get our game faces on.

Surreal moment number #2- Oldest son returns home. He spent the day boarding up 4 buildings for his employer. He has obviously done a man's work today and he is visibly glad that he isn't boarding up the house tonight. He does inspect our job to make sure it is done properly.

Surreal moment number #3- Dinner was a M. Night Shyamalan SIGNS dinner. What do you want that's in the freezer and cannot be cooked on the grill. Guess what.....that's what we are having for breakfast and lunch today as well......

So now 7 am. All day yesterday we received numerous calls....advise to shelter in place....actually I think the term they used might of been hunker down. Only in Texas. I just received a call today with the advise to follow your family plan. Apparently we are getting the direct hit.

Gotta go bake.....I am my mother's daughter. She bakes in the hours before a storm comes a shore.....

The end of summer...

In the past few weeks, millions of school children across the state have gone back to school. Instead we remodeled our bathroom and took a few weeks off..... I originally thought that we could continue school through the process but I really just didn't realize how loud and dusty it was going to be. This week we will finish up our plans for summer AND I'm remembering why I don't like to take long breaks. 3 weeks is too long....the first day back was frustrating.....the routine was off.....I felt disorganized and Sam was in a foul mood. Today was much better!

I think I found it! All-About-Spelling has answered our needs. Sam likes manipulating letters and I don't like trying to keep track of cards. All About Spelling has these great little tiles ( get the magnets!) and we can keep the letters on our new magnetic board. I just put the whole board away and voila no mess. I use the tiles for Spelling practice ( yes, following AAS book 1- how un-CM of me) and reading practice. Sam loves it! So do I.

These tiles have been an a fabulous addition to our CM-reading lessons. I can write a sentence on the magnetic board and he can use the tiles to practice each word. I erase a word and he fits a new one in. Reading practice has become so much more fun for him and less of a chore for me. I am still alternating between 100 EZ lessons ( currently on lesson 46) and my own lessons. I am finding it much easier to devise my own lesson with the magnetic board/ tiles and no longer feel confined to using just one specific book. I just choose a sentence of interest from a different subject and start teaching from it. I think the constant variation is a plus for Sam and helps keep his interest.

We need to work on narrations. I knew going into this year that this would be the hardest part and would require the most patience from me. Some days he gets it and some days he just doesn't. I have found asking him to act it out works better than just telling it back. He can remember more details with his body then with just his speech. I don't know if this is residue from his speech issue....maybe he is afraid to speak and use the wrong words or have me correct his speech?? Hmmmm something for me to think about. He is far more visual than I originally thought. He gives the best narrations with picture study and with any subject that he can see. If he only hears it he doesn't remember a lot of details. I think tomorrow I'm going to have him close his eyes to remove the visual stimulation and see if he remembers more details. Hmmm something else to think about. Overall his narrations are fair to good depending on what he is narrating.

His vocabulary has exploded! This has been a absolute pleasure for us. He has had such a limited speaking vocabulary it is nice to see him surpass his peers in the area.

Math-u-see continues to work great. We are working our way through lesson 8 this week.

Artistic Pursuits is a new favorite and we will continue it doing a lesson a week.

We'll start Spanish next week....